Although Foucault is certainly one of most influential scholars of our age, law is for Foucauldian scholarship akin to an “undigestable meal”. This is due to a seemingly unresolvable dilemma: how is ...
More

Although Foucault is certainly one of most influential scholars of our age, law is for Foucauldian scholarship akin to an “undigestable meal”. This is due to a seemingly unresolvable dilemma: how is it possible to analyse law through Foucauldian lenses if Foucault himself claimed (albeit cursorily) that law, in modernity, has been colonised by other disciplines and ousted from the locus of power? Building on Foucault’s ideas about power, freedom, and subjectivity, the present book tackles this problem through a critical genealogy of the philosophico-political ideas at the basis of modern law, delineating the historical emergence of the implicit regulative conditions of our legal present. The book proposes that modern law and modern forms of power – which Foucault termed biopolitical because they sort, train, and tame persons and populations with the aim of normalizing society – developed symbiotically and that, to the extent that modern law establishes the existence of a universal legal subject, law’s functioning is made possible by the homogenization of society through normalising practices. We are however fast moving towards the absolute limit of this normalizing complex. As normalising strategies are progressively unable to homogenise a social body which is increasingly composed by “fluid” subjects, modern law faces two interconnected challenges – a normative one (how can normalizing laws properly reflect the wills of a mass of differentiated fluid individuals?) and a functional one (how can normalizing laws effectively regulate such new protean social body?) – which put into question the very foundations of our legal discourse.Less

A Foucauldian Interpretation of Modern Law : From Sovereignty to Normalisation and Beyond

Jacopo Martire

Published in print: 2017-08-01

Although Foucault is certainly one of most influential scholars of our age, law is for Foucauldian scholarship akin to an “undigestable meal”. This is due to a seemingly unresolvable dilemma: how is it possible to analyse law through Foucauldian lenses if Foucault himself claimed (albeit cursorily) that law, in modernity, has been colonised by other disciplines and ousted from the locus of power? Building on Foucault’s ideas about power, freedom, and subjectivity, the present book tackles this problem through a critical genealogy of the philosophico-political ideas at the basis of modern law, delineating the historical emergence of the implicit regulative conditions of our legal present. The book proposes that modern law and modern forms of power – which Foucault termed biopolitical because they sort, train, and tame persons and populations with the aim of normalizing society – developed symbiotically and that, to the extent that modern law establishes the existence of a universal legal subject, law’s functioning is made possible by the homogenization of society through normalising practices. We are however fast moving towards the absolute limit of this normalizing complex. As normalising strategies are progressively unable to homogenise a social body which is increasingly composed by “fluid” subjects, modern law faces two interconnected challenges – a normative one (how can normalizing laws properly reflect the wills of a mass of differentiated fluid individuals?) and a functional one (how can normalizing laws effectively regulate such new protean social body?) – which put into question the very foundations of our legal discourse.

Thirteen essays exploring Bruno Latour's legal theory from a variety of disciplinary perspectives – including a chapter by Bruno Latour responding to the arguments and critiques offered in each ...
More

Thirteen essays exploring Bruno Latour's legal theory from a variety of disciplinary perspectives – including a chapter by Bruno Latour responding to the arguments and critiques offered in each chapter. This book develops an exciting new vision for legal theory combining analytical tools drawn from Latour's actor-network theory developed in works like Science in Action, Reassembling the Social and The Making of Law with the philosophical anthropology of the Moderns in An Inquiry into Modes of Existence to blaze an entirely new trail in legal epistemology. Bruno Latour's writings in science and technology studies, anthropology, sociology and philosophy are well-known, but only rarely has his work in law been appreciated as a core element, and still less as an obligatory passage point for students and scholars of law. This collection demonstrates the urgency with which both of those omissions must be reconsidered.Less

Latour and the Passage of Law

Published in print: 2015-11-01

Thirteen essays exploring Bruno Latour's legal theory from a variety of disciplinary perspectives – including a chapter by Bruno Latour responding to the arguments and critiques offered in each chapter. This book develops an exciting new vision for legal theory combining analytical tools drawn from Latour's actor-network theory developed in works like Science in Action, Reassembling the Social and The Making of Law with the philosophical anthropology of the Moderns in An Inquiry into Modes of Existence to blaze an entirely new trail in legal epistemology. Bruno Latour's writings in science and technology studies, anthropology, sociology and philosophy are well-known, but only rarely has his work in law been appreciated as a core element, and still less as an obligatory passage point for students and scholars of law. This collection demonstrates the urgency with which both of those omissions must be reconsidered.

Does there exist a Logos capable of limiting the very power of God? This question closely relates an inquiry arising in classical Greek philosophy to the theological knowledge originating in Jewish ...
More

Does there exist a Logos capable of limiting the very power of God? This question closely relates an inquiry arising in classical Greek philosophy to the theological knowledge originating in Jewish biblical exegesis. Two thoroughly unrelated worlds, one would say, yet a historical nexus between them existed, that created by Christianity, which has marked the destiny of our West. As Leo Strauss has masterfully shown, Christianity has been for two thousand years, despite its many inner contradictions, something like an interface between two hitherto unrelated worlds: Greek philosophy and biblical revelation. By reformulating them and turning them on their heads, it has shaped an entire civilization: our Western civilization, which is now drawing to a close. Thus, never has it been as appropriate as the present moment to come to grips with our opening question about the “limits of God”, or about the original laws of logic and ontology that somehow “limit” God’s very actions, since it arises from the profound need – prior to St. Paul unthinkable in concrete terms – to form a link between these two radically different worlds. Our West, with its devastating philosophical rationalism, its systematic Christian-Enlightenment repudiation of the Spinozist-Nietzschean concept of potency, from its very inception hinged on this question of knowledge of a law before God and above God. Today we must acknowledge that – precisely because of what this question, taken to its extreme consequences, implies – it was destined from its origins to end.Less

On the Idea of Potency : Juridical and Theological Roots of the Western Cultural Tradition

Emanuele Castrucci

Published in print: 2016-08-01

Does there exist a Logos capable of limiting the very power of God? This question closely relates an inquiry arising in classical Greek philosophy to the theological knowledge originating in Jewish biblical exegesis. Two thoroughly unrelated worlds, one would say, yet a historical nexus between them existed, that created by Christianity, which has marked the destiny of our West. As Leo Strauss has masterfully shown, Christianity has been for two thousand years, despite its many inner contradictions, something like an interface between two hitherto unrelated worlds: Greek philosophy and biblical revelation. By reformulating them and turning them on their heads, it has shaped an entire civilization: our Western civilization, which is now drawing to a close. Thus, never has it been as appropriate as the present moment to come to grips with our opening question about the “limits of God”, or about the original laws of logic and ontology that somehow “limit” God’s very actions, since it arises from the profound need – prior to St. Paul unthinkable in concrete terms – to form a link between these two radically different worlds. Our West, with its devastating philosophical rationalism, its systematic Christian-Enlightenment repudiation of the Spinozist-Nietzschean concept of potency, from its very inception hinged on this question of knowledge of a law before God and above God. Today we must acknowledge that – precisely because of what this question, taken to its extreme consequences, implies – it was destined from its origins to end.

Legal humanism has become deeply entrenched in most modern works on European legal history from the seventeenth century onwards and has been accepted with such blind faith by many modern scholars ...
More

Legal humanism has become deeply entrenched in most modern works on European legal history from the seventeenth century onwards and has been accepted with such blind faith by many modern scholars that few have challenged it. The consequence is that scholars who have accepted the traditional view have used it to substantiate larger claims about the death of Roman law, the separation between the golden age of a pan-European medieval ius commune and the fragmented reception of Roman law into the nation states of Europe, and the relevance of ‘dogmatic’ Roman law as opposed to ‘antiquarian’ Roman law.Less

Reassessing Legal Humanism and its Claims : Petere Fontes?

Published in print: 2016-01-01

Legal humanism has become deeply entrenched in most modern works on European legal history from the seventeenth century onwards and has been accepted with such blind faith by many modern scholars that few have challenged it. The consequence is that scholars who have accepted the traditional view have used it to substantiate larger claims about the death of Roman law, the separation between the golden age of a pan-European medieval ius commune and the fragmented reception of Roman law into the nation states of Europe, and the relevance of ‘dogmatic’ Roman law as opposed to ‘antiquarian’ Roman law.